Putting It All Together

Many children and maybe even more grown-up children enjoy playing with Lego. Lego is a contraction of two Danish words - leg and godt or "play well." Later, someone realized that in Latin lego means "I put together," which seems to be as appropriate as the Danish name.

Recently I was reading an interesting article about Denmark (the homeland of Lego) and was reminded of some interesting Lego lore I had come across - a Lego OSU stadium, a Lego church, a Lego tower, and a Lego artist.

Lego stadium

A scale model of the Ohio State Stadium took 2+ years of work (July 2002-October 2004 - over 2000 man hours). It is a 1:275 (approximate) scale, built entirely with Legos, and weighs around 38 pounds, not including the plywood base. Jim Stricker, the person who built it, had certain "rules" to help guide the project: no modifying of pieces, no glue, and no paint. This model is held together entirely by the interlocking features of the Lego bricks and gravity. Because of problems of space and expense, Stricker had to make certain compromises - notice the absence of yard lines, for example. One challenge was obtaining a horseshoe shape with square Lego pieces. Up close, the appearance seems rough, but everything blends together well when viewed at a distance. The builder lives over 200 miles from the stadium (in Michigan, of all places!) and had to rely on pictures and very infrequent visits to the real stadium.

Lego Church

I received an e-mail a while back with amazing pictures of the Lego church. It features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics, a nave, a baptistry, an altar, a pulpit, and an elaborate pipe organ. You can visit the site of the woman who built it by clicking here

Here are a few pictures of the Lego church:

Lego tower

At Legoland in Windsor the Lego brick tower stands nearly 100 feet tall and is shaped to resemble a Viking longboat mast. This tower, composed of nearly 500,000 bricks, was put up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Lego bricks in May of this year.

Click here to read an article about the Lego tower. Here are a couple of pictures of the tower.

Lego artist

One of my former students has a hobby/sideline of making portraits with Legos.

15 Comments on “Putting It All Together”

We visited LegoLand in San Diego last year. They have a fascinating array of structures built from legos–everything from the Capitol building to Mt. Rushmore–even the Golden Gate Bridge! There are videos you can watch of the people working on them (they do use glue, but probably because the things sit outside all of the time!

@Donna – That’s neat about your visit to Legoland in San Diego. I wonder how many Legolands there are worldwide.

@Barbara H. – I told Jason about your comment, and he confirmed that he did indeed enjoying playing with Lego after he stopped playing with other toys. He hastened to add that he no longer plays with them. Don’t tell him, but I’ll bet he’ll enjoy playing with them with his kids some day. I know I couldn’t wait for our kids to learn to color in coloring books so that I could “help” them.

@Michael – I also was deprived of Lego in my childhood. I enjoyed Lincoln Logs, but I especially enjoyed my set of American Bricks. I really wish I had kept mine so that my kids could have played with them … with my help, of course….

Even through high school, my brothers and I would sometimes pool our pieces and make something big, like a huge airplane or a giant automated castle (when a knight walked up to the drawbridge, it would automatically raise up and archers would pop up onto the battlements). I even brought all my bricks in a bag with me back to school, just in case… 😀

My 2 boys ( 7 and 8 ) are thoroughly enjoying this week’s iv. Being Lego fanatics they now feel inspired to build bigger and better structures! I recently gave up my scrapbooking table ( I needed a bigger one :-0) so that they can display with pride all their wonderful creations. Also, thanks for the link to the lego artist. It’s quite fantastic!

@Carol – I’m glad that your sons got some ideas for bigger and better Lego creations. I hope you have been able to get that bigger scrapbooking table that you needed. 😉 Our daughters share your enjoyment of that creative outlet, and Grandma and Grandpa have benefited with some really nice keepsakes. Do you scrapbook your boys’ Lego creations?

I did indeed get that bigger and better scrapbook table! It’ll hold the boys and me anyway, since they enjoy scrapbooking also – my daughter, not so much You know I had never thought to scrapbook their creations before, thanks for the idea! We did get to Lego City in Downtown Disney this past summer. There are some pretty cool creations there too.

@Carol – Great! Glad you got that table and that you share it. Maybe the bug will bite your daughter also. I look forward to seeing pictures of the Lego page(s) you eventually do. All these people visiting different LegoLands makes me want to do the same.

@Tammy – Thanks for sharing the info about the OSU Lego Stadium, the traveling displays, and the cake site. Definitely cool stuff.

I remember when my little brother got his first set of legos. It was love at first sight. ^_^ I was able to play with him at first, since he wanted help. Now, however, his legos are completely off-limits to girls.

M. Loach! I thought you might be amused to learn that my brother has decided that I am allowed to play with his Legos once again. I have a sneaking suspicion that he just might miss me when I’m at school after all. ^_^

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My name is Rob Loach and I welcome you to my blog. People come here for an "instant vacation." You can learn more about me and about my instant vacations, including why my blog is called "ivman's blague," by visiting the about page, where you can watch my TV interview about my blog. My site is seven years old, so check out the tabs at the top of this page, subjects of interest to you in the tag cloud, and older blog posts (over 700 of them) not on the home page of the blog. There's lots of humor for you to enjoy!

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